This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it’s a huge problem, but I don’t really see a lot of discussion about it. We have the technological means now for every single person on the planet to communicate directly with every single other person, in near-real time. The only real barrier to it is logistical (and is mostly impeded by resource hoarding). That’s amazing. And the recent election in Nepal via Discord has me thinking again about how the internet could form the basis for a real, democratic, world government. There are a ton of problems that would need to be addressed, off the top of my head:
- not everyone has internet access
- not everyone that has access has unfettered access
- It’s hard to preserve anonymity and have fair elections
- it’s hard to verify elections haven’t been tampered with
- what happens when violent crimes are committed?
- how do taxes work in this system?
- how do armed forces work in this system?
I don’t think any of these problems are necessarily unsolvable, but I don’t know how. So, how would we get from where we are to where we want to be? How do we even define what the end state should look like?
Nation States exist primarily as a bi-product of war. The Russia/Ukraine war, as well as the Israeli genocide in Palestine, show that global economics carry significant weight in modern warfare. IMO in the long run, we will see the role of nation states reduced to legislated authorities. while their provinces/states shoulder the majority of the actual administrative responsibility. International trade, defense, and regulatory agreements will become become global standards (like GAAP) providing the stability that nation states used to.
The economy will not function to create artificial scarcity as the current economic status quo does. Taxes will not be something people think about regularly because our economies can sustainable provide for its citizens when there aren’t rich people carving out a massive slice for themselves.
With war largely being a bi-product of scarcity and greed; armed forces will expand it’s role as a logistics entity. They’ll continue being the primary vehicle for disaster and emergency relief. International collaboration in training and deployment will be the norm.
The global economy will boom as infrastructure and amenities are built for billions of people. Elections will become digital using block chain tech to verify integrity. Hopefully elections will shift away from electing individuals and towards electing policies.
In general I believe that the majority of shitty human behaviour should be expected in a dog eat dog world. As our global society shifts slowly towards egalitarianism, so will many of our contemporary problems fade away.